Homemade rhubarb varroa strips for bees
When
I checked our hives for mites a month ago, the Warre hive passed with
flying colors. The Langstroth hive, on the other hand, had more varroa
mites than I would have liked...but not quite enough for immediate
intervention. So I decided to take a wait-and-see approach.
After a month of wait,
it was time to see. A second mite count this week showed that counts
had increased a bit but not dramatically in both hives. Still, with a
47 mites/day fall in the Langstroth hive, I opted to try out the rhubarb
home remedy we heard
about years ago.
To that end, I took two of
the last rhubarb leaves remaining in the fall garden and stewed them in
water for a couple of hours. Then I turned off the heat and let sheets
of printer paper soak in the water for a while before taking them out
to dry.
Finally, I opened up the
Langstroth hive for the last time of the year. While counting honey
stores, I found the quite small brood area and slipped the homemade
varroa strips in between the frames. I suspect the bees will chew and
remove the strips in relatively short order, so only time will tell
whether the remedy has any effect. Let's see if I can remember to do
another mite count in the middle of November to gauge the results.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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